So after graduation, his parents were surprised when a letter arrived from the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, informing Ben that “Because of the severity of your disability, an employment outcome cannot be achieved. You are not eligible for rehabilitative services.”

Throughout high school, Sharon had supervised all of Ben’s pre-vocational experience, organized his work and kept him on task, but upon graduation, he had to leave her behind. Dan and his wife realized they were “unprepared for the magnitude of the challenges”  Ben  faced in the real world.

However, they have stepped up to the challenges, believing Ben deserves a place in this world. It also started Dan thinking about other young adults with autism and their job prospects.

To help others benefit from what they’ve learned, Dan wrote a book about their experiences, Saving Ben: A Father’s Story of Autism, published by the University of North Texas Press. It covers their journey together, starting with Ben’s regression as an infant, his diagnosis of autism at three and goes on into the challenges Ben is facing as a young adult.

In a post on the Texas A&M University Press Consortium blog, Dan offers a glimpse into some of those challenges and offers advice to others who are currently facing them (e.g. “Consider a summer job for your ASD child instead of summer school”), as well as ideas for a national agenda for living and learning with autism (e.g.”Create a service movement like Teach for America or AmeriCorps that employs young people as life coaches to work with ASD kids.”)

Click here to read more of Dan’s ideas and here for more information about Saving Ben: A Father’s Story of Autism.

PathPoint,  a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization established in California in 1964, is dedicated to helping people with disabilities or disadvantages reach their fullest potential. They help them overcome barriers to employment by placing them in work environments that are compatible with their individual interests, talents and abilities.

PathPoint currently serves over 2,000 individuals with disabilities or disadvantages,  including people with physical or developmental disabilities (such as Autism, Cerebral Palsy, or Down Syndrome), people with psychiatric disabilities (such as Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, or Anxiety Disorder), and people who are disadvantaged (such as low-income seniors or at-risk foster youth transitioning to independence).

The mission of PathPoint is “to provide comprehensive training and support services that empower people with disabilities or disadvantages to live and work as valued members of our communities.”  To accomplish this, they provide a wide range of employment, independent living, and community access services from building social skills, vocational skills, and independent living skills, to providing the support necessary to maintain true, personal independence for a lifetime.

PathPoint’s living services assist people with disabilities or disadvantages who desire to live more independently. Designed to fit the specific needs of each person, they include learning health and medication management as well as community living skills like nutritional cooking, personal hygiene, safety, banking and money management.

PathPoint also offers day programs where participants access community services and develop independent living skills (such as banking, budgeting, public transportation, safety and recreational planning) that will benefit them for a lifetime.

Hundreds of businesses, big and small, including  7-11, Pizza Hut, hospitals, schools and even the Social Security Administration, have partnered with PathPoint to provide employment opportunities to its participants. In return, the businesses receive customized staffing solutions to help meet all levels of employment needs with well-trained, motivated employees.  PathPoint staff provides consultation with businesses interested in diversifying their workforce.

Click here to visit their website and learn more about PathPoint.
(photo courtesy of PathPoint website)

“My career would not have existed at all without the autism,” says Brix.

Now Brix sits on the board of Aspiritech, a non-profit Chicago company that trains high-functioning autistic people to work as testers for software companies. They recently launched a pilot program to train high-functioning individuals with autism as testers for software development companies. Their first client is mFluent, an iPhone application company near Chicago. The actor Ed Asner, whose son Charles is on the autism spectrum, is also on the board.

Aspiritech is modeled after the Danish company Specialisterne (the name means “the specialists”) which trains people with autism as specially skilled employees who are sent out as hourly consultants to companies to do data entry, assembly work and other jobs that many workers would find tedious and repetitive. Founded in 2004 by businessman Thorkil Sonne, the father of an autistic son, the company has 50 employees, 75 percent of whom are autistic. They say tests show their employees can be up to eight times more accurate at tasks like manual data entry than workers without autism.

Aspiritech founder Brenda Weitzberg’s 30-year-old autistic son, Oran, discovered limited social skills can limit job options even if you have a college degree. He has trouble interpreting nonverbal signals from others. But  jobs at places like Target, Trader Joe’s and AMC Theater helped him learn to interact with others. He is one of three software testers who received training in Aspiritech’s pilot program. He is now teaching others and Aspiritech is now interviewing candidates for the next training round.

A professor at Copenhagen Business School, Robert Austin, says that redefining conditions like autism as differences, rather than disabilities, is important for a developed economy.

Brix says “”My understanding of autism is a person has both great gifts and deficits,” says Brix. “My whole career was based on skills that came as a result of, not despite, my autism.”

To read the original article published in written by Chris Tachibana, Ph.D., and published on Dec. 8, 2009 in msnbc, click here.

Photo of Ron Brix by Andrew A. Nelles for msnbc.com

The purpose of this program in southern Illinois is to provide special education students ages 18 through 22 on-the-job training in a field related to their career interests.  According to Vocational Coordinator Christine Gooding, the students work for half of their day and attend either the life-skills-focused Bridges Program or the academic-focused Connections Program the other half.  The school district provides job coaches for students who need additional support.

There are currently 16 job sites where students do a variety of different jobs. “Through this program, students are able to gain an understanding of their strengths/weaknesses, likes/dislikes and how their disability may affect their work performance,” said Gooding. Many students are hired full time at the job sites upon graduation.

One example is David Sims, a 23-year-old with autism who started out at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital by participating in the vocational program and now averages 32 hours a week operating giant machines that fold and iron sheets, towels, gowns and other linens.

“He has a good work ethic, and he’s just enjoyable to be around,” said laundry manager Glenn Reinneck. “He always greets you with a smile. He’ll say, ‘Have a good week!’ or ‘See you tomorrow!’”

St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Belleville Animal Clinic and Belleville Area Humane Society are just three of the job sites involved in the program. The district pays minimum-wage salaries for one semester and then shares costs for another semester. They’re hoping to increase the number of businesses and organizations that are participating.

“Our goal is for (students) to be self-sufficient and self-supporting,” said Gooding. “We want them to be productive members of society instead of graduating and just sitting at home.”

Material for this post was gathered from email correspondence as well as articles in Healing Thresholds (click here) and bnd.com (click here).

Men with Mops, the result of a brainstorming session between the parent of a man with autism and the Rutgers’ Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center for the Disabled, only hires part-time autistic workers who are paid minimum wage for their work, which includes cleaning, shoveling snow and mowing lawns. According to the original article, the company now has about 80 customers and is manned by 23 men with mostly severe disabilities. Each worker is accompanied by a job coach at all times.

Read the original article by Michael Rispoli here.